Sengir01 - Spying with a vengeance

[sturick]

Everything with the exception of RNG tomfoolery sounds great!
001 will be the first of many double-o's doing our dirty work.

Whosit, didn't you get the memo?
Because we need the TPC reports to be attached to end of each file.
So yeeeahh...we are gonna need you to work this weekend.

Did anyone see my red stapler???

EDIT: Cuz I'll set this place on fire.

 

[Whosit]

Post has been edited to include the save. I thought I'd cured that.

Umm . . . I have a maroon stapler.

 

[nocho]

Nice write up as usual, Whosit!

Got it.

Had a look at the save and all looks well. I only wonder what those two poor spies do wandering in the southern ice. I think they better could have been sent to some target. Oh well.

I'll see if we can trade something next turn. Interesting to see the things the AIs are researching, Monty is even going cultural with Aesthetics .

I take it we want to keep Ligurian. Then the long march to Cuman seems to be in order. I guess with Alex's borders popped, better to just keep Cuman now instad of resettling 1N. That leaves the question of what to do with the settler that's in the queue. That lake town Whosit proposed? Where exactly? 1N of the iron for instance?

The other open question is if we want to adopt judaism. I'd say yes, seeing as it is that most AIs are. I'd also adopt OR for the building bonus.

We'll need more spies and still some more workers I think.

Thoughts?

 

[Whosit]

I only wonder what those two poor spies do wandering in the southern ice. I think they better could have been sent to some target. Oh well.

I sent the spies exploring south for a couple of reasons: I thought I already had enough heading to Korea to steal what Wang Kon currently had and that they wouldn't be vulnerable to being smited by Barbarians. (My reasoning may have holes, but I just wanted to explain myself.)

Regarding Ligurian, I was under the impression that we'd burn it and resettle on our dot with the Settler that's coming out.

As for my "Lake Town," (I should probably make a screen shot ) I was thinking of putting it on the forest on the southern side of the lake that is north of Berlin. Hope that makes sense. So it's west of the river. I think that that minimizes overlap, and it currently provides 3 grasslands for farming purposes. I suppose plains can be farmed, as well. That 3 food surplus means that it can only work 3 grassland mines until we get biology, but that should still work out to about 14+ hammers, depending on how many plains farms are being worked. As others have mentioned, though, it's a low priority if there are any other places at the edge of our territory to settle.

Oh, and don't forget about trade options next turn.
Adopting the dominant religion would also probably be a good idea, as you said. I wonder what we'll do with all our workers once they finally run out of things to do.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I think I put down a dot in BUG's city dot system for the Lake town, so check if that's there.

 

[nocho]

Not that big a deal with the spies, I guess after your unlucky RNG roll with the barbarians you didn't dare anymore to scout with an axe! After Norvin's bad luck with the spy I wonder what 5-10% chance I'm going to suffer in my set.
I'll send them somewhere, surely the western one can check out sal's land and maybe even steal theology from him.

I'm not sure about burning Ligurian if the idea is to settle 2E of it, like the original dot. We'll likely never get Ragnar's horses and even his deer seems tough. And we can't deprive the scandinavians of their Rudolphs, can we? Seriously though, I'd just keep Ligurian. It's not bad as it is and I don't see any advantage now in settling more to the east. If we could bomb it with an artist maybe, but likely we won't get any artists in this game.

If we want horses, there are some in a rather horrendous place about where that western ice spy is now. We could maybe settle 2N1E of those horses (4S of Frankfurt), temporarily borrow Frankfurt's corn to be able to whip a monument and maybe a courthouse and forget about that city, but at least have horses.

Your lake town looks ok to me. It actually has 4 grasslands for farming, also counting the one Berlin is using now. With 4 mines and the iron to work it indeed will have decent prodcution so will be worth it.

I'm contemplating starting on the Palace in Cologne after the courthouse is built. With current production it will take 27 turns, a bit can be shaved off if we mine some of those jungle hills. Anyway, that may roughly coincide with when we can steal CS, so I think that woud be worth it as there's not too many things Cologne can build otherwise anyway.

Techwise, I'll try to steal construction with the spy currently in Korea I think. Why trade something if you can steal it? Getting calendar soon is priority though, so if Gandhi will trade it, I'll take it.

I'll probably play in 24 hours from now, so still time to chime in with your comments!

 

[Whosit]

Why trade something if you can steal it?

Because we Germans are such an upstanding and moral people.

 

[nocho]

T187 After all the misfortune the RNGod bestows on us some riches in compensation.

Nobody wants to trade anything, so no choice but to steal. The spy in Korea seems to have just arrived so will have to wait some turns for the discount.

T188 Alex wants us to go to war with Korea. We rather save them to live like a parasite off them, so tell him sorry, but no thanks.

We capture Ligurian for the loss of a sword, but we gain a worker. I decided to keep it, as there have not been objections in the past 24 hours...

T192 We built Stuttgart, Whosit's famous lake town. With 4 farms, 4 mines and grassland iron it will be a rather decent production center.

Christ arrives 280 years late somewhere in Arabia. Oh, Kufan, it's called.

T193 Okay, so Alex thought "Monty, if you can capture somebody's capital, I can too!"

Robert E. Lee's career must have been rather short.

We try to get construction from the Koreans. 77%. Mmm, that wouldn't be odds good enough for Norvin and Whosit, but I'll take it! And with success.

T197 Gandhi asks for open borders, sure.

T199 Monty is obviously annoyed with Alex showing his muscles and declares on him!

T200 Gilgamesh also got a adrenaline rush and declares on Gandhi.

We capture Cuman and keep this one as well. Alex's borders had popped so already claimed both sugars. Again we exchange a sword for a worker with the barbarians.

T201 Gilgamesh wants us to join his crusade against the vile Indians, we courtly decline.

T202 Wang wants us to cancel deals with Alex, we say no again.

We succesfully steal calendar from the Indians.

I had a spy sent over and put EP spending for some turns fully on Gandhi to reach enough points. I adjusted it back, leaving everyone with weight 1, but Wang, who I left on 0. We have enough points for now on him anyway and he of course is severely weakened with the loss of Seoul. However, he gets feudalism in 6 turns which will be nice for us as well . A spy is already waiting for that. Another one is in Ephesus, Greece. A third one wanders around Arabia, and the fourth just arrived in India who are researching currency, which of course is another juicy target. Number 5 just returned to Berlin after getting calendar.

Other things worth to mention: I started on the palace in Cologne. I mined some jungle hills to speed it up a bit. The workers there can now finally focus on the calendar resources over there. Some courthouses have been built and I hired two spies for the moment, which also brought the number of turns to metal casting down from 1000+ to some 330. Cool, we actually tripled the number of beakers per turn!
I started a settler in Frankfurt, with the horse in the southern ice in mind. Then I realised, "Hey, I just built a horse archer! How's that possible?". Yes, we already have horses, in Frankfurt even . Too much sun today I guess. And yesterday for that matter . Anyway, that settler doesn't have a clear destination anymore, as far as I am concerned.

Oh, I didn't convert to any religion yet. At the beginning of my set Alex was the only one beside us without any religion yet, and wanted to wait a bit to see what he'd become. He's become a hinduist. Of course now he's fighting it out with Monty, so we need not fear him much if we go jewish anyway. Alex is the only one with a superior power rating by the way (0.7), we even beat Monty (1.1).

To close it off, the tech picture.

 

[Whosit]

Sounds like you had an exciting and productive set, nocho. Glad to see the army I left you was put to good use. All things considered, and based on how the cards fell, keeping those barbarian towns was probably the best move, though Ligurian will overlap quite a bit with our other town down there. Oh well.

By the way, what accounts for the probability of success on these spy missions? The odds were very different for the two techs you stole (good going on that).

I'm also very pleased to hear that nearly everyone else is busy beating the tar out of each other. Though, what are we going to do if one of the AIs starts to get too big? Will we have to consider an "intervention" to maintain the balance of power? To get ahead of myself a bit, if took such a course, would we want to keep cities we took or liberate them to their original owners for diplomatic bonuses? Thinking about it, we probably still want to expand if there's any room (though it doesn't look like there's much). Aside from spending gold on them, the more towns we have the more EPs we'll eventually have as we build the buildings that produce them.

Of course, if we focus on military might for a set or two, we can probably "liberate" Ragnar's cities from him. Unless, I suppose, the other Jews (like Monty) would get "you attacked our friend" diplomatic penalties.

Honestly, I'm not sure what we should do about religion. There are a majority of Jews, but Alex is Hindu and isn't a pushover, and Gilgamesh could get stronger, too. Perhaps we should remain unaligned until we need to take a side.

Oh, and lastly, I'm going to get me some lakeside property at Stuttgart.

 

[nocho]

By the way, what accounts for the probability of success on these spy missions? The odds were very different for the two techs you stole (good going on that).

To be honest, I'm in the dark about that as well. I always thought that the stationary spy for instance increased the odds, but I'm now under the impression that it just decreases the EPs you spend on the mission itself, but does nothing about the odds. Distance seems to have the same influence, it affects the number of EP spent, but not the odds. Maybe the odds are influenced by things like open borders and same religion. But I'm just guessing here.

I'm also very pleased to hear that nearly everyone else is busy beating the tar out of each other. Though, what are we going to do if one of the AIs starts to get too big? Will we have to consider an "intervention" to maintain the balance of power? To get ahead of myself a bit, if took such a course, would we want to keep cities we took or liberate them to their original owners for diplomatic bonuses? Thinking about it, we probably still want to expand if there's any room (though it doesn't look like there's much). Aside from spending gold on them, the more towns we have the more EPs we'll eventually have as we build the buildings that produce them.

Of course, if we focus on military might for a set or two, we can probably "liberate" Ragnar's cities from him. Unless, I suppose, the other Jews (like Monty) would get "you attacked our friend" diplomatic penalties.

With all the warring going on and all the stupid demands about joining them, we'll unescapeably incur diplo penalties anyway. So I wouldn't worry about them too much and just go and kill someone when we see fit. Both Babylon and Scandinavia seem like nice targets for the medium term future.

 

[muxec]

Be careful with Alex, he ruined my first offline EE game. He loves to beeline steel and if he has enough land and vassals he can get there quickly. The 3rd most annoying AI after Ragnar and Shaka. Make sure he does not kill Monty the Zuma.

 

[Sengir]

I'd say Ragnar would make the best first target, followed by Hammi, especially if Monty and Alex keep stomping on eachother.

Note about the use of spies: it is better to keep a couple of them in a city where we want to steal in case one gets caught. That way we don't have to wait untill the next is in place. (So a couple more spies is probably called for)

 

[nocho]

And a roster...

Sengir
Norvin Green
Whosit
nocho
sturick - up
Meiz - on deck

 

[sturick]

I got it and will play tomorrow morning.

My parents anniversary and sisters birthday were both yesterday so I had my hands full!

I will post a plan later on tonight.

 

[sturick]

Nice job securing us two new techs nocho!
I just love how many cities we have visibility on...its awesome!

Plan for the next set.

1)Fix pasture at Hamburg
2)Get more cottages up at Munich.
3)Plantation dyes while the palace finishes at Cologne.
4)Probably stop building the settler at Frankfurt...unless someone can find a place to put him.
5)Whip out buildings in our newer cities.
6)Steal currency from Gandhi...I will tweak the EPs to get enough to do the trick.
7)Steal feudalism from Wang.
8)Concentrate on fortifying our cities and consolidating our army for a push on Rags or Hammy.

My vote is for Rags as he is annoying and his territory easier to annex.
However, I think I have found our Ironworks city in the middle of Hammys territory.

Both yellow and red would have 6 mines.
Yellow picks up more riverside levee tiles while red gets the rice.
Something to think about when we invade Hammy.

 

[Whosit]

Interesting. I would vote for Yellow because, for a production site, I think that the extra hammers would help in the long-run. We can run some farms in the meantime to get the food surplus we need, though I think we'd want watermills eventually and extra farms can be removed when we hit Biology. (I can't remember off the top of my head, but doesn't State Property cause Watermills to generate extra food?) Hammers hammers hammers.

 

[nocho]

Plan sounds good!

Mmm, never noticed the cows at Hamburg were not pastured.

Some minor notes:
Whip the monuments in Essen and Ligurian asap, both will grow next turn and should be whippable then.

Maybe we can build a library in Frankfurt and hire two scientists there. We may produce a GS to bulb something at some point.

There are 2 workers at Essen busy with a farm but that was because there was nothing much better to do atm, I'd send them to the bananas right away.

Ironworks is a long way off still, but your proposed site maybe good. However, I think Berlin fully farmed/mined/workshopped would make an excellent candidate as well!

Good luck with your set!

 

[sturick]

Yellow would has 3 more riverside tiles than does red.

Yes SP allows workshops and watermills +1
I assume SP will be the civic we run once we get to Communism.
On a large map like this SP makes so much sense.

Too bad we can't research Communism for ourselves to get the free GSpy.

Another thing to consider.
If we do run State Property then we should build the Forbidden Palace in Berlin.
SP eliminates the distance component of maintenance so it doesn't really matter where we build it.
That way we can have all of the GSpy producing wonders in one location.
Great Wall, Forbidden Palace, Kremlin, Pentagon, and West Point.
Thats 16 GSpy GPs a turn just from wonders counting our philo bonus.

Getting the Kremlin and the Pentagon will take a little bit of planning on our part since we will never be the first to the corresponding technology.

 

[Whosit]

Mmm, never noticed the cows at Hamburg were not pastured.

Actually, I'm complicit in this as well. I remember reading before my set that the cows hadn't been pastured, but when I was playing I looked and could have sworn there was a pasture there. So some of that is mine.

(I was meaning to ask something, but I think I just got it.)

 

[Sengir]

Plan looks good sturick. Play whenever you can find the time.

 

[sturick]

Preturn

I cruise through the cities...there will be a couple of whipping opportunities next turn like nocho pointed out. Gotta make sure I don't miss them.

I order our covert agents to focus more on Gandhi as he is close to learning Currency.

(1) 445 AD

I send 001 over to Agra in Indian lands to be the backup spy for currency.
Workers are busy all over the globe improving tiles.
Our happy cap should improve nicely with the new additions of dye and silver.

Ligurian recieved the benefit of a chop this turn so I will wait to save the whip for the granary next turn.

Essen gets its monument whipped though.

Oh I also switch Frankfurt to a worker build.
I think I will finish the settler at some point and keep him on ice until we find a suitable location for him.

(2) 460 AD

Essen monu>courthouse
Ligurian monu>granary

We have an impressive worker fleet here team...lots of worker moves each turn so far!

(3) 475 AD

Berlin temple>HA

Our happycaps rise as the first dye is hooked in Cologne.

(4) 490 AD

Monty wants us to join him in his fight with the Greeks.

I do fear that Alex is currently winning the war but now isn't the time to help out.

(5) 505 AD

Hamburg temple>cata
And its pasture is back!

Dortmund whips its courthouse.

Bananas near Essen are plantationed...just need a road now.

(6) 520 AD

We catch a spy infiltrator near Hamburg.

Dortmund courthouse>granary

Alex makes peace with Wang Kon...still at war with Monty.

(7) 535 AD

Berlin HA>axe
Frankfurt worker>settler

Question? What kind of city is Frankfurt going to be?
I find it kind of handy to put a sign on the city tile to remind us what to build...can we do that here too?

Time to steal us some Feudalism...but first an aside.
The spy camped in Wangs territory was sleeping...please try to avoid that.
I realize that this game especially is going to require lots of camping by our spies, but every turn we forget about them is a turn that they could be caught!!!

Moving on...

Feudalism has been nabbed!

Plus, our spy returned home safely!

(8) 550 AD

Hamburg cat>cat

We don't have enough points to steal currency yet.
So I am going to assign all EPs to Gandhi to speed up the process.
This should only take two turns with full weight on Gandhi.

002 is moving to Alexs city to be the backup for stealing Metal Casting which is due in 10 turns.

Munich has a good whip opportunity...normally I don't like to whip a cottage town.
But this city is working a plains forest and a newly built cottage so no harm.

Ligurian whips its granary.
Same with Stuggart.

(9) 565 AD

Munich temple>spy
Ligurian granary>courthouse
Stuttgart granary>courthouse

Not quite enough points to steal currency yet.

I do make this deal with Hammy...

(10) 580 AD

Berlin axe>longbow

We have enough points to steal Currency now.

I love the odds we are getting today...95% and 98%

Success!

We make it back to Berlin without a scratch!
003 has earned his stripes.

The boost from Currency allows us to bump to 50% espionage while breaking even.

It seems like a good stopping point but the tech steal from Gandhi will leave us without his demos and research...can't have that.
I will play until we are back to proper spying levels.

(11) 595 AD

Alex requests our help in destroying the Aztecs...not at the moment buddy.

Hamburg cat>cat

003 is sent off to Gilgamesh to perhaps steal drama.

I readjust the EP levels back to proper levels.

No weight on Wang...not helping us by teching currency.
2 weight on Ragnar for potential revolts.
2 weight on Alex to steal Metal Casting.

EDIT: I just noticed that we can sell Mono to Ragnar for 150 gold...that sounds like a good deal to me.

Also thought I would put up the demos screen for those interested.

Roster
Sengir
Norvin Green
Whosit
nocho
sturick - just played
Meiz - up next